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"It appers impossible for anyone seriously interested in our civilization to ignore this book. It is a `must' book for those in every branch of science . . . in addition, economists, politicians, statesmen, and businessmen cannot afford to overlook cybernetics and its tremendous, even terrifying implications.

"It is a beautifully written book, lucid, direct, and despite its complexity, as readable by the layman as the trained scientist." -- John B. Thurston, The Saturday Review of Literature

Acclaimed one of the "seminal books . . . comparable in ultimate importance to . . . Galileo or Malthus or Rousseau or Mill", Cybernetics was judged by twenty-seven historians, economists, educators, and philosophers to be one of those books published during the "past four decades," which may have a substantial impact on public thought and action in the years ahead." -- Saturday Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

difficult read
it took a fairly major effort to read this one. the texts are hard enough to understand with ancient language (its hard to find people talking about "computing machine" nowadays). Lots of math appears in this book, and there certainly they are not step-by-step. This is basically for people with a good intuitive grasp of the underlying mathematics or else there is no chance you can follow it. The style of writing also seems foreign to me (21 years old). But very insightful book with good rewards, but I still feel that I spent a disproportional amount of effort for the reward that I get.

Timeless work joins philosophy, computing, and mathematics
Norbert Wiener was interested in the means by which feedback could be communicated to help correct the problems that develop in an organism. In investigating this matter, Weiner investigates a number of topics that differentiate between mere computation and intelligence and the importance that information plays in both. This is the unifying theme of a book that seems to wander through many topics using philosophy, mathematics, and the theory of computation.

For example, in chapter one of the book, Wiener illustrates the basic difference between man and machine with a discussion of the concept of Newtonian versus Bergsonian time. He states that Newtonian time - that of high level physics phenomena- is reversible. Bergsonian time, the time of living organisms making their way against entropy is not reversible. Thus since Newtonian time is reversible nothing "new" happens, as opposed to the irreversible time of evolution and biology in which there is always something new.

He continues this idea in the chapter "Computing Machines and the Nervous System." In it, he defines the characteristics of computing machinery. He concludes that the brain, being irreversible, is thus an analog of a single run of a machine. Wiener also points out that many problems of human metabolism and reproduction are associated with the inability to receive and organize impulses and make them effective in the outer world. Thus Weiner ultimately concludes that to live effectively is to live with adequate information.

There are also chapters that are almost purely philisophical about the role of information in society. Then there are other chapters that present heavy-duty mathematics on such topics as representing a time series of known statistical parameters asBrownian motion in an attempt to solve communications problems in nonlinear situations. The mathematics in this book is presented with little or no background, so you are going to need other sources to understand what Wiener is trying to convey.

In summary, if you want an interesting read on the science and philosophy of artificial intelligence and the role of the machine this is one of the best out there. It still stands the test of time after nearly sixty years.

Welcome to the Machine
Why is everything called "cyber" (cyberspace, cyberpunk)? Because of this book from 1948 in which Norbert Wiener, a prof at MIT, coined the phrase "cybernetics," from the Greek word "kybernutos" meaning "governor." If you're tired of viewing your computer as a black box (the input goes in here, the output comes out there, and something mysterious happens inside), or if you wonder if the tech world has any relation to the natural world, check out this unusual book, which is rewarding on many different levels.

Find out why robotics, neural nets and artificial intelligence (AI) predate the PC and even the mainframe computer and are not a new development. Travel back to the days of the giant ENIAC when the computer seemed to be an idea on everyone's mind, simply waiting for advances in technology to make it a reality. But this very readable book goes further, as suggested in Wiener's subtitle: "Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine." Many specialists in various fields initially opposed this book because of Wiener's interdisciplinary approach, which broke down the hard and fast walls between various disciplines.

The vocabulary of this book has now become commonplace (we ask for "feedback" and refer to "systems" on a daily basis), but many of its ideas have yet to be discovered. I couldn't keep up with the math, but you don't need to to grasp the basic ideas or to enjoy Wiener's lucid and luminous style, which ranks among the best of popular science writing. Wiener also wrote a general market book, "The Human Use of Human Beings" to present some of these ideas to a wider audience. Some fifty years after its initial publication, this book still forms an inviting welcome to the machine.

A fundamental law that is applicable to almost everything
Two books, both written in the late 1940s stand out as contributing much to our understanding of the world around us.One of these is "Cybernetics" by Weiner and the other is "The mathematicaltheory of communication" by Shannon.Both require some study bycontain many sections that are easily readable by anyone which get the mainpoints across in an understandable manner.

Weiner's book discuses the useof feedback on virtually every type of control mechanism known... i.e.,those of nature as well as those of man.It is the "basic" stuffthat everyone of us uses everyday and every moment of our lives whether weare aware of it or not.Whereas Shannon's book tells us how to communicateinformation in an error-free (or nearly so) way, Weiner's book explains howthat information is used to provide effective control of everything aroundus.For many decades since I first was introduced to these two works, Ihave used their principles in most things I do.

I very highly recommendthese two books to anyone who considers themselves a "thinkingperson" and is seeking to understand the world around them.Botheasily get 5 stars.They are major works! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

delivery problem
I expect that this book is a classic and must be very good but I haven't received it after I booked a month ago. Thus, it is hard for me to review it.

He doesn't deliver for me
I finish this thinking he is a very intelligent man: sort of an Issac
Asimov with less imagination. He shows off a lot of understanding, but in the end fails to form a theory or method for humanity to deal with the intelligence of machines in the future.In the late 40's early 50's the idea that machines were going to be a big part of the rest of the century wasn't unique, but he fails to "get it": that computers were going to become
another machine age and that in the current age they were going to start replacing human worker in real time.I came looking for answers or at least ideas and came away with just the idea that he was a very clever fellow
who didn't have a clue about things like voting machines or robots.
A pioneer, yes, but not one that fully understoodwhere it was all leading.

important and relevant after half a century
More than fifty years after its initial publication, this book remains as relevant and prophetic as it is brilliant and exhilarating.

To start, Wiener explains cybernetics in a way that the intelligent layperson can understand; he discusses how human beings, animals, and machines relate to one another through communication and feedback, thus becoming systems that limit or temporarily reverse the universal tendency toward disorganization (entropy). After establishing this framework, he discusses the implications of cybernetics on society. As he takes cybernetic theory to its logical conclusions--that is, accounting for the communication and feedback between human beings, machines, and the environment as a whole--his insights are shown to be profoundly humane and ultimately very inspiring.

This is no ordinary scientific text. There are discussions of Augustinian vs. Manichaean worldviews and their implications; the inevitable spread of dangerous information (such as that resulting in the atomic bomb) despite the strenuous efforts of governments; and the need not to rely on machines--non-human machines as well as "human machines" such as bureaucracies and corporations--to do the difficult work that human beings must do to remain ethical, responsible, and free.

All in all, this is an outstanding book written in lucid, beautiful prose. The book tells us as much about the systems that make up our world as it does about the brilliance, humility, and humanity of Wiener himself. No summary of this book, in blurb or review format, can possibly do justice to Wiener's achievement.

A concerned and conscienscious genius
Wiener was acutely aware of the promise and the danger of the new technolgies he was helping to invent. He worked very hard during the Second World War to help develop an anti- aircraft system which would make use of some of his mathematical and technical innovations. However the dropping of the Atomic Bomb turned him wholly against the military establishment and he became an insistent voice calling for regulation of military technologies.
His own vision of a humane society is one in which the cybernetic and feedback elements enable a better managing of the economy and society as a whole. And this when he again was very concerned about the possible destructive elements of technologies which would provide unreasonablemeans of control over individual human lives. He very much was concerned that a society in which machine- slaves produced everything would deprive humanity of its freedom and dignity.
In other words he saw great promise in the new technologies but also was concerned that might exercise a degree of control over humanity which would make them more harmful than beneficial.

Another Wiener Gem
Norbert Wiener was a child prodigy and Professor of Mathematics at MIT from 1919 until his death in 1964.He invented the science of cybernetics (look it up in the dictionary) and the guided missile but refused to help the military during the cold war.This volume includes an open letter published in the January, 1947 Atlantic Monthly magazine entitled "A Scientist Rebels" by Norbert Wiener.An introduction by Wiener biographer Steve J. Heims provides a context for Wiener's works.

If you are at all interested in cybernetics, and particularly interested in the effects it is having and will have on society, this book is must reading.Of course, this book does not approach Wiener's "God & Golem, Inc."(reviewed elsewhere in Amazon.com) for sheer brilliance, but then, what does, except perhaps the "Bahir." ... Read more

Product Description
This book contains lectures presented at the MIT symposium on the 100th anniversary of Norbert Wiener's birth held in October 1994. The topics reflect Wiener's main interests while emphasizing current developments.

In addition to lectures dealing directly with problems on which Wiener worked, such as potential theory, harmonic analysis, Wiener-Hopf theory, and Paley-Wiener theory, the book discusses the following topics:

Fourier integral operators with complex phase (a contemporary successor to the Paley-Wiener theory)

statistical aspects of quantum mechanics and of liquid crystals

financial markets, including the new trading strategies for options based on Wiener processes

statistical methods of genetic research

models of the nervous system, pattern recognition, and the nature of intelligence

The volume includes reviews on Norbert Wiener's contributions from historical and current perspectives.

This book gives mathematical researchers an overview of new mathematical problems presented by other areas and gives researchers in other fields a broad overview of the ways in which advanced mathematics might be useful to them. ... Read more

Product Description
Child prodigy and brilliant MIT mathematician, Norbert Wiener founded the revolutionary science of cybernetics and ignited the information-age explosion of computers, automation, and global telecommunications. His best-selling book, Cybernetics, catapulted him into the public spotlight, as did his chilling visions of the future and his ardent social activism.
Based on a wealth of primary sources and exclusive access to Wiener’s closest family members, friends, and colleagues, Dark Hero of the Information Age reveals this eccentric genius as an extraordinarily complex figure.No one interested in the intersection of technology and culture will want to miss this epic story of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and colorful figures.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

shocking! disturbing! controversial! (and, fairly good!)
As you might guess from my choice of review title, I'm spoofing the corny book title and scattered journalistic excesses of this otherwise solid biography. I must confess that despite reading the book cover to cover I am still unable to see the subject as a "dark hero" of anything, although like many more ordinary mortals he was quite human and capable of being angry, nasty, jealous, and spiteful when provoked (or when he thought himself provoked). Perhaps the worst that can be said of him was he broke with a fragile young protege, Walter Pitts, in an unpleasant way, and apparently sent him on a tailspin into alcoholism and early death. However, it was clearly not his intention to cause such an outcome, and Mr. Pitts' background made him particularly susceptible to such a denouement. If anyone in the book can be described as "dark" (an adjective which I find unfortunate when used as a negative), it would be Wiener's wife, whose sexual obsessions and reactionary, anti-Semitic political views are fully aired.

Wiener was obviously a brilliant thinker, a very important mathematician and engineer, a good self-promoter, and a seminal figure in the early days of information theory and computers. He did not quite grab the brass ring in either field, however: that honor goes respectively to Claude Shannon and Johnny von Neumann. What he did do was write a scientific book which somewhat inexplicably became a best seller and made him famous in a way few scientists have been. Later in his career he became increasingly concerned with the possible negative effects of computers and cybernetics on human society, and issued some warnings which we would continue to be well advised to heed.

That this biography was written by journalists rather than scientists is evident throughout. There is an annoying tendency to employ unnecessarily purplish adjectives and to be sloppy with scientific definitions (e.g. entropy is defined as the state of maximum disorder and chaos, and then a little later defined correctly as a measure of the amount of disorder). I would have preferred a more balanced assessment of Wiener's importance vis-a-vis other major figures of his time, such as Shannon and von Neumann. However, the book is nonetheless well-researched and detailed, and certainly gives the reader an excellent depiction of Wiener the man and the scientist.

bent twig coming home to roost
I was mainly interested in the psychological insights. People who have been born with a brain face problems that those who accept regimentation for uniformity might consider crazy. Norbert Wiener's activism in response to the use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II might be used to display some of his fits of temper in this book, but the level of psychological attention on how his mind worked in various situations and the ways other people tried to help seemed very down to earth for me. My interest in psychotic multiplicity wanted all the details on his wife Margaret. Just to provide a sample:

Dr. Pauline Cooke, a research fellow at the University of Illinois Medical School and a member of McCulloch's retinue who later also moved to Cambridge got the same impression. "It would be impossible for a person like Margaret Wiener to like Warren McCulloch. He was the antithesis of everything a middle-class German believes in. They were social worlds apart." (p. 224).

I was recycling periodicals from my closet when I found a review of this book in the New York Review of Books and wanted to get not just this book, but Snapping, by the same authors, which has a second edition covering a Branch Davidian event on April 19, 1993, near Waco, Texas, when Mt. Carmel went up in smoke.

A Fascinating Account of Norbert Wiener - Father of Cybernetics.
_Dark Hero of the Information Age:In Search of Norbert Wiener The Father of Cybernetics_ by the researchers Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, who had previously written on cults and fundamentalism, is a fascinating biography of an important figure in the history of the last century who played an important role in heralding in the coming age of information.Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964) was a fascinating individual and a man of many talents who is perhaps best remembered as both a mathematician and the father of the science of cybernetics.Wiener was a highly eccentric individual who had been renowned as a child prodigy in his youth and studied at Tufts and Harvard from the ages of 11 to 14, eventually earning his Ph.D. at age 18.Following his early years, Wiener became an academic originally focusing on philosophy and mathematics, though taking a more applied bent towards mathematical research than some of his contemporaries such as G. H. Hardy, who routinely castigated him for this.Wiener's career took off at MIT where he developed the science of cybernetics, which was to play such an important role in furthering engineering, biological, and social sciences, as well as playing the role of an astute commentator on the role of automation.Cybernetics (a term derived from the Greek for "steersman"), the creation of Norbert Wiener, was an essential science in the understanding of feedback and control systems.Wiener continued to develop his theories following the publication of his first book on the subject and in particular examined the role of automation among workers.Wiener also was able to prove an inspiration for several important engineering projects focusing on such things as the human brain, artificial intelligence, and the development of prostheses for amputees.Wiener's ideas played an important role in the United States, but with the advent of the Cold War they also played a role in the Soviet Union, as well as in India where Wiener saw certain potential developments arising from newfound technologies.While Wiener was an agnostic throughout his life, his ancestors were Jews and he may have been related to the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and he developed a profound interest in Indian philosophy and Hinduism ultimately leading him to accept the notion of reincarnation.Wiener's theories played an important role in paving the way for the information age to come and we see the end result of that in the information explosion in this century.This book offers a fascinating examination of the life of Norbert Wiener and is an excellent biography of this great man.

This book starts with Wiener's early life, particularly as he developed into a child prodigy.The book begins with Leo Wiener, the father of Norbert Wiener, who was an adamant proponent of the ideals of Tolstoy and vegetarianism.Leo Wiener came to the United States and eventually made his way to Cambridge, Massachusetts where Norbert's talents for languages became widely known.Norbert Wiener became known as the "most remarkable boy in the world" and would attend university at Tufts and Harvard, originally specializing in zoology, along with other child prodigies such as William James Sidis.Following his Ph.D. at Harvard at the age of 18, Wiener traveled to Europe to study logic and philosophy with such individuals as Bertrand Russell.However, upon returning home, Wiener underwent somewhat of a crisis.Wiener, who was a lifelong manic depressive and prone to absent-minded spells and depressions, would largely see his emotional turmoil as arising out of his early youth.Wiener went on to join the faculty at MIT, an engineering school which hoped to promote a new mathematics department.Wiener made several important contributions and it was here that he developed his science of cybernetics.Wiener was known to all his students for his "Wienerwegs" or "Wienerwalks", where he frequently absent-mindedly roamed about the halls and campus of MIT.Wiener married and had two daughters.He also became involved with various other individuals and prodigies who tried to advance the science of cybernetics and the logical system developed by Russell in the _Principia Mathematica_.Wiener also was active in promoting the Macy conferences, where a diverse group of intellectuals including mathematicians, economists, social scientists, and anthropologists worked out the ideas of cybernetics.Wiener was deeply concerned about the role that automation would play in the coming era and wrote an important work focusing on the "human use of human beings" to show his concern over the new role of automation and computers.Wiener also wrote some more religious and philosophical works in which he attempted to address the problem of the "golem" from Jewish mythology as it concerned man and his creations.During the Cold War, Wiener refused to participate in research for the military and this led to his being branded a "Red" by the FBI.Wiener eventually was to travel to Europe and even the Soviet Union where he attempted to advance the science of cybernetics, although he made clear that he disapproved of the role of both superpowers in the Cold War.Wiener also knew the mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Nash while he was at MIT.In his old age, Wiener took an interest in India and Hinduism.Wiener attempted to identify a new role for automation in India and the potentially liberating effects of such technologies.Wiener also traveled to Stockholm to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony and it was here that he died.

This book offers an interesting account of the life of an important figure in the dawn of the information age.Norbert Wiener and his science of cybernetics played a great role in giving rise to the information age and the era of computing.While Wiener was certainly a man of many talents and contradictions, he also had a darker side to him as did the technologies made possible through his advances.It is for this reason that he may be seen as the "dark hero of the information age" and the father of cybernetics.

100,000% Shovelware
From a historical and economic and sociological perspective, this book is utter propaganda.

For example, from page 340, "To date, India's engineers and entrepreneurs have had the most success following the path Wiener chartered for their country's advancement, and while their numbers are still small compared to the whole of their population, they are reaping many of the benefits Weiner envisioned without the drawbacks of older models of industrialization."

Joke!

There is categorically no relationship between India's newfound economic success and Norbert Wiener.None.Na-da.Nothing.Zip-0!

And that was just a single sentence from this text.Just imagine what else lurks in 400 pages of writing from what are two absolute fools.Flo conway and Jim siegelman are the stupidest writers ever!

Dark Hero of the Information Age recounts his life and discoveries - and the consequences of his discoveries.
Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Nortbert Wiener the Father of Cybernetics tells of an ex-child prodigy and MIT mathematician who founded cybernetics - and then spent the rest of his life warning the world of the consequences of the new technologies he helped foster. Surprisingly, his works and his warnings are relatively unknown today - despite the fact many of his concerns and predictions came true. Dark Hero of the Information Age recounts his life and discoveries - and the consequences of his discoveries.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch ... Read more

Product Description
Norbert Wiener was one of the great mathematicians of this century. The Collected Works reprint all of Wiener's scientific and scholarly papers, with commentaries by prominent scholars that place them in the context of present day research. The first three volumes cover Wiener's contributions spanning numerous branches of mathematics, mathematical philosophy, relativity, and quantum mechanics. This fourth and final volume contains his work in the field he christened "cybernetics" - a synthesis of communication and control in animal, man, and machine - and its applications in engineering, neurophysiology, and in particular encephalography and sensory prosthesis. Wiener's incisive social, education, and literary essays are also included.This volume is particularly timely in that many of today's publicly debated problems - the social and moral consequences of automation, the educational process, and the social responsibilities of scientists - were clearly foreseen by Wiener 40 years ago. The solutions he proposed then are illuminating now more than ever.Commentaries on the papers in Volume IV are written by W. R. Ashby, J. S. Barlow, D. Bohm, J. G. Burke, B. G. Farley, D. K. Ferry, J. Garcia Ramos, E. L. Gilbert, T. Kailath, H. Lev-Ari, R. Mann, O. K. Moore, P Masani, B. R. Myers, E. Nagel, P Pay, R. S. Phillips, B. Randell, A. Rosenblueth, R. S. Rudner, R. Saeks, A. L. Samuel, H. von Foerster, M. S. Watanabe, and R. L. Wilder. Some of these commentaries are comprehensive essays on topics that Wiener's work has put on the intellectual horizon.P Masani, University Professor of Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, and a former collaborator of Wiener, also edited the first three volumes of the Collected Works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

fascinating but not complete
The first thing that needs to be said is that this series is not the collectedworks of Norbert Wiener, but the collected papers of Norbert Wiener.Thus you will not find any of Wiener's more developed works on Cybernetics, Science and Society here.You will still have to buy 'Human use of Human Beings', 'God and Golem' etc.

The papers are also reproduced directly from their original sources.Thus you can get advertisements, tiny fonts, page leaps, no continuous pagination and so on.This is either irritating or interesting depending on your point of view.

However, the main point is the work, and this is every bit as interesting as you might hope.Sure if you have read the other stuff you are going to have read some of it before, in better versions, but you are also going to find Wiener's philosophy articles for an encyclopedia and other gems which would easily be lost.

Also the technical, mathematical writings tend to be in the other volumes, which may be a plus for some people.

4 stars because its not absolutely essential, and because of the formatting issues. ... Read more

Product Description
With the aid of Fourier-Mellin transforms as a tool in analysis, the authors were able to attack such diverse analytic questions as those of quasi-analytic functions, Mercer's theorem on summability, Milne's integral equation of radiative equilibrium, the theorems of Munz and Szasz concerning the closure of sets of powers of an argument, Titchmarsh's theory of entire functions of semi-exponential type with real negative zeros, trigonometric interpolation and developments in polynomials of the form $\sum^N_1A_ne^{i\lambda_nx}$, lacunary series, generalized harmonic analysis in the complex domain, the zeros of random functions, and many others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wonderful Book on Wiener
Masani is both a highly respected mathematician as well as a person who knows Wiener quite well. My contact was only from afar while at MIT many years ago but Wiener had a strong influence on many of the students especially in electrical engineering. Masani writes a review of Wiener's life and contributions and, although it is not a biography in the typical manner, it is a collection of very readable and insightful discussions on Wiener's contributions and how his life intertwined with these works.

Masani explains many of the complex technical issues regarding such topics as the ergodic theorems, generalized harmonic analysis and the Brownian motion contributions with exceptional ease. He does justice to the work Wiener did on structuring the early concepts of digital computers and the work he did with CY Lee on filtering in communications networks.

Masani leaves out many of the psychodrama tales in other books on Wiener such as that by Conway and Siegelman. This book does not look at any of the problems which may have been a part of Wiener's life but frankly many of these problems are pandemic in academic environments. In fact looking at Wiener over his lifetime or looking at a University at anyone time and the foibles of the faculty is an exercise in the Ergodic Theorem applied to the Academy. Thus Masani not dealing with these issues gives great clarity to his presentations.

There were a few items I had wished he would have gone deeper into. First the issue of how he reacted to the Shannon Information Theory papers. Clearly Wiener had assisted Shannon from time to time but Shannon's papers were so simple and direct that they resonated so much more than any of the classic mathematics of Wiener. Masani covers this topic but all so slightly.

Masani does a wonderful job in discussing cybernetics and the philosophical underpinnings and that in itself is worth the read. Finally Masani recounts Wiener and his comments on the economy. Given today's times these remarks alone are worth the read.

Masani states that in a paper he wrote in the mid 1950s Wiener is quoted as saying:

"Suppose, now, that a sum of money at the time of Christ had been left at 2% compound interest; for example the thirty pieces of silver off Judas. By what factor would it have multiplied up to the present time? We are approaching the year 2000 and in order to express our result in round numbers let us suppose that we are at the year 2000. Then one dollar at the time of Christ would amount, at 2%, to a quantity with over ninety-seven zeros. At any conceivable scale of evaluation one cent at the time of Christ put in a bank at 2% compound interest would amount to something like 10 to the 84 times all the value of the goods in the world at the present time. This is ridiculous, but it still has meaning."

He continues:

"The sums earned by money put out to interest have been wiped out time and time again by wars, famines, plagues, and other catastrophes. These catastrophes have been great enough to wipe out every single commercial undertaking of antiquity of thousands of years, and if they had not taken place. the rate of interest for long term investment could scarcely be two tenths of a percent."

Masani then states Wiener's conclusion:

"It follows that modern capitalism is able to offer attractive returns on private investments in long term undertakings only by its condescension of bankruptcies during down phases of its periodical trade cycles. For the well off the resulting losses are often on paper, but they are painfully real to poorer people thrown out of work. Thus the system is not socially homeostatic."

Wiener had a practical insight that many in today's complex world of macroeconomics should consider. For Wiener was a true mathematician, one of the best of the 20th century, and unlike these economists who attempt at mathematics to hide a swath of frailties Wiener made primal contributions, the Generalized Harmonic Analysis and Brownian motion being two which have affected the current world.
... Read more

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John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener were mathematician-scientists, both child prodigies born near the turn of the century. As young men each made profound contributions to abstract mathematics. ... Read more

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It has been the opinion of many that Wiener will be remembered for his Extrapolation long after Cybernetics is forgotten. Indeed few computer-science students would know today what cybernetics is all about, while every communication student knows what Wiener's filter is. The work was circulated as a classified memorandum in 1942, as it was connected with sensitive war-time efforts to improve radar communication. This book became the basis for modern communication theory, by a scientist considered one of the founders of the field of artifical intelligence. Combining ideas from statistics and time-series analysis, Wiener used Gauss's method of shaping the characteristic of a detector to allow for the maximal recognition of signals in the presence of noise. This method came to be known as the "Wiener filter." ... Read more

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The book was written from lectures given at the University of Cambridge and maintains throughout a high level of rigour whilst remaining a highly readable and lucid account. Topics covered include the Planchard theory of the existence of Fourier transforms of a function of L2 and Tauberian theorems. The influence of G. H. Hardy is apparent from the presence of an application of the theory to the prime number theorems of Hadamard and de la Vallee Poussin. Both pure and applied mathematicians will welcome the reissue of this classic work. For this reissue, Professor Kahane's Foreword briefly describes the genesis of Wiener's work and its later significance to harmonic analysis and Brownian motion. ... Read more

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Introduction by Steve Joshua Heims

"Norbert Wiener helped to build and inform our high-tech society. Amathematician with dirty hands, he moved easily between theory,invention and engineering. . . . The manuscript of this unpublished 1954book was found long after Wiener's death, and is only now available.It's inevitably out of date here and there, but the uncannily accuratepredictions and warnings at its heart bring credibility to advice andinsights that are all too relevant to our present situation." -- J.Baldwin, Whole Earth Review "The mark of a great book is that itshould be relevant well beyond its time, and this volume by Wiener isprecisely that. In lucid, enormously readable language, Wiener providesa whistle- stop tour of the history of science and technology from thestart of civilisation, charts the growth and decline of intellectual andpractical excellence, and uses many examples - such as the developmentof paper - to show that tools and the skills to realise a design inpractice must be available for inventiveness to flourish." --Scientists for Global Responsibility Newsletter

Internationally honored for brilliant achievements throughout hiscareer, Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), Institute Professor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, was an insightful observer of therole of science in society. This book, written in 1954 but only nowpublished for the first time, can be read as a salutary critique ofevents in science that Wiener accurately predicted and a chance torethink the components of a social and political climate that encouragesinventiveness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not a book on how to invent
This is a book on history and social conditions of invention. It should be categorized as a history book. As such,it is a book bordering on personal speculation. It would be much better if Wiener had stick to his own scientific field and written a book on how to invent or discover.

A book well worth reading
It has been said that all of science is concerned with ideas of patterns and all of mathametics is concerned with patterns of ideas. This book is a wonderful combination of both concepts. Norbert Wiener's toweringintellect,knowledge of the history of science and ability to developinteresting associations between diverse areas of scientific activity,which on initial consideration appear unrelated, have produced a documentwhich is grand in scope and remarkable in accomplishment. Moreover, hisstyle of writing is, in my opinion, quite attractive. He has many axes togrind and once they are sharpened he applies them with enormous vigor. Forexample, he refers to the patent as "nothing more than a ticket tolitigation". There is much to be learned from this book which canreadily be applied to current areas of major importance such as molecularbiology and solid state physics where new discoveries and their commercialapplications clearly emulate societies previous experiences with ourfundamental understanding of electricity and its application to both thetransfer of power and of information. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A mathematician's life without the mathematics
The stories about Norbert Wiener's absent-mindedness are legendary, yet so prevalent and supported by so many sources that they almost certainly are true. Yet, his writings are clear and follow specific trains of thought. This book is an autobiography of his later years, which were simultaneously some of the critical years for the survival of western civilization. They cover the years of the great depression, sandwiched between the first and second world wars.
His account deals very little with his mathematical work, which is mentioned, but only the sparsest of details are offered. The story line is largely what he was doing in the last two-thirds of his life, the places he traveled to and the people he met. And travel he did. From the perspective of the twenty-first century, we tend to consider mathematics in the first half of the twentieth to have been essentially a European activity. However, Wiener spent a great deal of time in China, Japan and India. This was refreshing to read, as trips to such countries rarely appear in other accounts of those years.
Wiener basically is described as a man who worked hard in spurts and takes a great deal of time traveling the world. Without stating it in those terms, he is described as a cultured European style gentleman, interested in the areas of the world beyond mathematics. I found this refreshing, as so many stories about him describe a man so self-absorbed that he can barely walk across the street without help.
While I did enjoy the book, the lack of greater detail about his mathematical work was disappointing. Additional descriptions of his work at the level of a popular audience would have made it more interesting for all people interested in Wiener and his work. ... Read more

Product Description
One of the great mathematicians of this century, Norbert Wiener was a universal thinker of colossal proportions. This book contains the proceedings of the Norbert Wiener Centenary Congress held at Michigan State University on November 27--December 3, 1994. The aim of the Congress was to reveal the depth and strong coherence of thought that runs through Wiener's legacy, and to exhibit its continuation in ongoing research.

This volume brings together the great minds who have furthered Wiener's ideas in physics, stochastics, harmonic analysis, philosophy, prosthesis and cybernetics. The presentations coherently lay out the developments of the subjects from their inception. This volume provides an excellent pathway for new investigators who may wish to pursue these developments by following the footsteps of world experts.

There is no other book available in which experts in the various fields in which Weiner worked have presented his thoughts and contributions in such a coherent and lucid manner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The thermostat of society
We know the ideal room temperature that we want. There are however all kinds of factors continually changing the room- temperature. We havea means of measuring the temperature continually and making readjustments to keep it steady. The feedback, the report on what is 'happening now in the system'enables us to alter the system to produce the ideal result that we want. This feedback enables us to pilot the system as we want it , and keep it under our control.
So much for the thermostat, feedback, and I believe the basic idea of Norbert Weiner's communications- control world.
But what happens when the ideal result is not agreed upon at the outset? And what happens when the ' measuring' of the system is not a non- ambiguous straightforward matter?
Is it possible that human affairs are so complicated, so informed by what Isaiah Berlin might call 'competing and conflicting ideal ends and values', that a model for their development based on a simple physical analogy is not appropriate? and this even though that model is presented by a very great genius?

This book captures the essential aspects of communications.
The purpose of communication is to control our enviornment.In order to communicate effectively, however, it is essential that we consider the feedback we are getting.Alteration of sending messages is the mostimportant aspect of effective communication.That requires that weconsider the audience we are talking to and change our message relative tothe feedback and the audience.Weiner presents the philosophic argumentsfor communication.These concepts remain unchanged since the publicationof this book in 1954.This is the finest book on theory of communication Ihave read.Everyone concerned with improving communication should readthis thought provoking book. ... Read more